Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517?-1530)

Like Wyatt, Surrey travelled to Italy, and his imagination was captured by Petrarch's sonnets.

In terms of his contribution to the development of a literature in English, Surrey has less strength but more polish than Wyatt. He is more successful in fitting the accent to the normal accent of the word in spoken language, but he lacks the originality of Wyatt's creative touches.

Of the two, Surrey is more of a craftsman; Wyatt, more of an artist.

What to know about Surrey's work:

• Much of his verse handles the traditional Petrarchan theme of love, with typical Petrarchan conceits.
• He uses a natural imagery that is livelier and more "English" than that found in Petrarchan models;
• His language is often more "modern" than Wyatt's; thus, his meanings are often clearer;
• His rhymes are often "smoother" and easier than Wyatt's;
• His favorite rhyme scheme is 3 quatrains + a couplet: abab cdcd efef gg (with some variations); and
• He is fond of using the conceit of antithesis, as in his sonnet "Alas, So All Things Now Do Hold Their Peace."

Surrey is best known for his sonnets, smoother and more elegant than those of Sir Thomas Wyatt. Surrey's sonnets for the first time used the rhyme scheme Shakespeare later used.

Surrey probably got the idea of blank verse from another Italian verse form, versi sciolti, which is also unrhymed.

What is Antithesis? Antithesis is a figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, ideas, clauses, sentences. An example is "Man proposes, God disposes."

Like Wyatt, Surrey also produced other types of poetry, and it is in these other forms--especially the autobiographical works--that his true artistry is found.

Surrey is perhaps best known for introducing blank verse into English with his translation of Virgil's The Aeneid.

What is Blank Verse? Blank verse is unrhymed but otherwise regular verse, generally iambic pentameter. Blank verse is considered to be the best form for dramatic verse.

Blank verse

Blank verse, the basic pattern of language in Shakespeare's plays, is (in its regular form) a verse line of ten syllables with five stresses and no rhyme (hence "blank"). It was first used in England by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey* in his translation of the Æneid (c.1554).

Most early drama was written in rhyming verse, often in "fourteeners"--lines of fourteen syllables, also known as "poulters' measure" because it sounds like hens clucking.

But Norton and Sackville chose blank verse for their tragedy, Gorboduc, praised by Sir Philip Sidney for its rhetoric, and by the time Marlowe brought real brilliance to the language of the stage, blank verse had become the metre of choice.

Shakespeare's blank verse

In general, Shakespeare's blank verse, and the verse of his peers, evolved over the years from regular ten-syllable, regular, end-stopped lines: to become increasingly flexible, often including one or two extra syllables, and varying the regular iambic rhythm. Hamlet's most famous soliloquy begins relatively regularly, but the following lines each have an extra syllable:

Although the poetry of Wyatt and Surrey was not published during their lifetimes, after their deaths their work was collected in 1557 by the printer Richard Tottel.

The First Anthologies? Tottel's Miscellany & Other Collections of Renaissance Verse Tottel published Wyatt's and Surrey's work, along with the poetry of others, in his massively popular Songes and Sonnettes, written by the ryght honorable Lorde Henry Haward late Earle of Surrey, and other (more commonly known as Tottel's Miscellany). Tottel's collection ushered in many other such anthologies during Elizabeth's reign. They had wonderfully suggestive titles, among them The Paradise of Dainty Devices, A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant Inventions, A Handful of Pleasant Delights.